Adrienne Barbeau Book:

There Are Worse Things I Could Do Reviews:
Interesting Life Story of An Actress Who Can Also Write Well
2009-05-25 - Those of us who know Adrienne Barbeau only by her television or movie appearances learn a whole lot more about her in this interesting autobiography that is extremely well written.

She has been keeping a diary since childhood, so this woman knows how to write. The problem, as she admits at the start of the book, is that the thousands of diary pages contain almost nothing about her acting. So she has few details of the major performances she has been involved in. Instead she has plenty of information on her relationships, her loves and her many attempts at therapy. As long as you accept her limited career memory, it makes for a good book because she knows how to tell a story. And even when she lacks some details about her working background she manages to find something in her personal life to make the stories memorable.

There are some gaps that stick out--she claims she lived over three years in New York City before getting hired for a role there, yet she doesn't really say how she could afford her own apartment other than being a go-go dancer at some clubs (while paying for expensive acting lessons and therapy up to three times a week!). She claims to be incredibly naive, such as falling in love with a gay man or working for a Mafia boss without knowing the guy's background to the point that at times it's a bit hard to believe that she is as dumb as she claims to be.

She gets a couple minor facts wrong (Fred Grandy was not an "Ohio congressman"--he was from Iowa) but for the most part she breezes through the actors she worked with. But she refuses to give the names of some of the famous people she had affairs with, which detracts slightly from the credibility of the book.

As good as the book is, there is a sadness throughout, in which she never seems secure and doesn't know why. She gets into a hit Broadway show and then immediately wants to quit. She is drawn to men who are unavailable for long-term romantic relationships. She sabotages her career with some odd choices.

That insecurity is obviously from her dad abandoning the family when she was a child, but for years she had a difficult time admitting that. Instead she hopped from man to man and comes across as not only amoral but often immoral. So although she claims a wide-eyed innocence, the truth that comes out of her story is that instead of confronting her childhood issues head-on, she pushed them to the background and chose from an early age to support liberal lifestyles that were not so innocent. Instead of learning the lessons to help her achieve the personal growth she claims she wanted so badly, she often drew wrong conclusions when life didn't work out the way she liked.

It's certainly one of the better written celebrity autobiographies because of her talent at the printed word. You only wish she had made better choices and accepted herself years before writing this.

WHAT A HONEY!
2009-01-25 - ON ADRIENNE'S BOOK, IT WAS FABULOUS! NOT ONLY IS SHE A FINE ACTRESS, A VERY FUNNY WOMAN AND A FINE WRITER AS WELL,BUT SHE'S ALSO A SINGER ALSO. I'VE ACCOMPANIED HUNDREDS IN MY CAREER. SO I WOULD BE CURIOUS TO HEAR WHAT SHE SOUNDS LIKE..SHE MENTIONS THAT SHE SPENT TIME IN N.Y. I WAS ALSO THERE AT THE SAME TIME PLAYING IN A LOT JAZZ OF JAZZ CLUBS. BUT FOR A SINGLE WOMAN IN THE CITY, SHE HAD TO BE BRAVE AND GUTSY. I SAY HOOHRAY FOR HER. AND SHE IS ALSO ONE OF THE MOST ATTRACTIVE WOMAN I'VE EVER SEEN..BEST OF LUCK TO HER...FRANK TAGLIERI.

A great read
2007-08-31 - I wouldn't consider myself a huge fan of Adrienne Barbeau, but this book was a great read. In fact, I had a hard time putting it down! The book was very engaging, genuine, and fun to read. Ms. Barbeau is a definitely a class act; and she seems like a good, down to earth person. That's hard to say about many actresses these days.

A stunner! Adrienne Barbeau is a terrific writer!
2007-04-20 - I have always enjoyed Adrienne Barbeau's acting, but this book has transformed me into a bona-fide fan. Ms. Barbeau shares stories of her Hollywood travels and her journeys toward personal identity and healthy relationships. It's an amazing read -- I hated putting it down!

This book is definitely of a higher caliber than most Hollywood tell-alls, and Ms. Barbeau exudes class, authenticity and humor throughout. After reading it, one will want to sit down and get to know this remarkable lady.

Also, Ms. Barbeau has signed a book deal to write mystery novels! So we will have more books from this amazing writer. Yay!

Better than the standard actor autobiography!!
2006-10-18 - +++++

"I went from being a musical comedy performer to a sitcom actress to a scream queen to a mother and a TV talk-show host and a book reviewer and a voice-over performer, and then back to the stage and back to musical comedy and back to television and concert halls and more films, and even into the recording studio for a CD and into my office to write this book."

This is an excerpt from this page-turning autobiography by Adrienne Barbeau, a candid, funny, and self-deprecating autobiography that covers sixty years of her life. It is based on the journals she kept which she "began in 1955." She "wrote every day for the next forty years."

The above excerpt tells you generally what the book is about. Along the way, Barbeau tells us about "relationships and love affairs, emotional highs and lows, friendships and loss."

Highlights of this book include talking about her two hit TV shows ("Maude" and "Carnivale"), her major movies ("The Fog," "Escape from New York," "Swamp Thing," and "Creepshow"), her relationship with 1970's superstar Burt Reynolds, and her two marriages (the first to horror and science fiction director John Carpenter).

The title of this book is the title of a major song Barbeau sung in the original Broadway production of "Grease" which was "a major turning point in [her] life."

This autobiography is well written. What I especially liked was Barbeau's directness and the fact that you could easily follow the timeline of her life story.

Included in the book's approximate center are over forty black and white photographs. My favorite is the one that has her character in the movie "The Convent" gunning down nuns (or as she says "blowing away nuns").

Barbeau throughout her book doesn't come off as self-absorbed or an airhead. Instead she comes off as a smart, witty, loving, and giving person who, as this book chronicles, is a survivor.

Finally, I did find a few problems:

(1) I felt that Barbeau was holding back on certain details of her life story. For example, we are not told anything about the book's provocative cover photograph (shown above by Amazon). I learned that this is Barbeau's 1978 pin-up poster that actually rivaled Farrah Fawcett's poster of the same decade. Why are we not told anything about this?
(2) Many of the stories in her book are not followed up and this might be frustrating for some readers.
(3) She tends to sometimes flip-flop back and forth between present and past tense.

In conclusion, this is a good, solid, witty, and revealing autobiography about an actor who has been in the "biz" for more than four decades. It is definitely better than the standard actor autobiography!!

(first published 2006; introduction {entitled "The Journals"}; 40 chapters; main narrative 335 pages; acknowledgements {entitled "Thank You"})

+++++